Olga Rudge & Ezra Pound: "What Thou Lovest Well..."

53 A Marriage That Didn’t Happen
tic. Ezra’s things . . . were liked by those I spoke to, the first [‘Resineux’]
really beautiful. . . . I took Olga to lunch with me at the Club. She is a
charming girl, and so pretty.’’
The admiration was mutual. ‘‘I think her fascinating—could easily be
sentimental about her—but then I have a passion for old women,’’ Olga
wrote to Pound. In her view, ‘‘The Bach was better than Paris—George’s
Sonatas better . . . much cleaner.’’
A family dinner after the concert with brother Teddy and his bride,
Jane, ‘‘stirred up old things.’’ Olga never reconciled herself to her idea that
Teddy, a country doctor with a growing but unprofitable practice near
London, had married beneath his station.
She celebrated the Fourth of July with Ezra in Paris. Pound wrote to his
father: ‘‘We have the Salle Pleyel for the 7th July . . . the team is all-
American: Antheil, born in Trenton, New Jersey, and Olga, also from the
U.S.’’ He mentioned for the first time that Olga’s Aunt Louise and Uncle
Harold Baynes, the respected naturalist, were neighbors of the elder
Pounds in Wyncote.
Monsieur et Madame Ezra Pound sent formal invitations to a select list:
‘‘à une audition privée de Musique Americaine à 9 heures de soir, 7
juillet.’’ Pound’s contribution to the concert was a ‘‘XV-century piece I
dug up in Perugia [for] javanese fiddle, Chinese fanfare, violin, and tambourine,
to celebrate George’s entrance.’’ From the front row Sylvia
Beach, proprietor of the expatriate Left Bank bookstore, commented on
the works of the ‘‘two musical conspirators’’: ‘‘Adrienne Monnier and I
were seated with [James] Joyce and his son Giorgio. Joyce had brought
Giorgio along in the hope of converting him to modern music, but
Pound’s and Antheil’s compositions were hardly the best choice for that
purpose.’’
The next morning, a reviewer described the Antheil compositions as ‘‘a
gargantuan feast of cacophonies,’’ adding that ‘‘the throng of supporters
of futurist music . . . looked like the Dôme on a Saturday night . . . many of
the brethren posted to that tavern immediately afterward. Mr. Antheil’s
hammer-blows on the piano left the nerves of some in a shaken condition.’’
Pound’s compositions were ‘‘by far the most interesting and pleasing